This invention relates generally to the field of electronic circuit design. More specifically, this invention relates to electronic circuits which have a reprogrammable function.
Current, conventional digital computing architectures rely solely on the field effect transistor (FET) which is a four terminal device (drain, gate, source, and body). However, during operation for storing or retrieving information the FET device needs to be powered continuously. In addition, high charge leakage issues in the device require continuous refreshing of the processed information during standby and operation. This continuous need for power creates limitations on the system's power consumption and form factor scale.
One potential solution for computing architectures that eliminates the need for constant refreshing may lie within the realm of non-volatile, passive devices. One such device is the memristor, a non-volatile passive electronic device which only consumes power during operation and reconfiguration. To the extent only that memristors are not available is the reason why passive reconfigurable electronics are not available today. The fact that the memristor is a nonvolatile memory device could eventually mean that any standby power utilization of computing systems will be minimized or altogether eliminated.
The memristor device postulated in 1971 by Leon Chua [1] as the fourth basic circuit element has received much attention in the research community since the publication of Strukov's 2008 paper titled “The missing memristor found” [5]. The memristor name is a contraction for memory resistor [1] because that is exactly its function: to remember its history [3]. The memristor is a two terminal passive device whose resistance state depends on its previous state and present electrical biasing conditions, and combined with transistors in a hybrid chip, memristors could radically improve the performance of digital circuits without the necessity to shrink transistors [3]. Given their two terminal structural simplicity and electronic passivity, the applications for memristor technology range from non-volatile memory, instant on computers, reconfigurable electronics and neuromorphic computing [4],[3]. According to Chua [4], the memristor behaves like a linear resistor with memory.
What is lacking in the prior art, however, is the method and/or means by which passive memory devices such as memristors can be adapted to computing circuits so as to render the latter reconfigurable and eliminate the need for standby power consumption to maintain the reconfigured state.